Ad-spend on YouTube, Facebook to grow 130% in 5 years

Data from Juniper Research has found that advertising spend on FVoD (Free Video on Demand) content, such as media on YouTube and Facebook, will surge over the next five years, reaching $37 billion (€29.9bn) by 2022. This is up from an estimated $16 billion in 2017.

In addition, unique users of such content will reach just under 4.5 billion globally by 2022, as the appetite for free video media continues its expanse.

OTT’s Push Live Content

The research report, Digital TV & Video: Network and OTT Strategies 2017-2022, found that leading FVoD provider YouTube, which sees over 1 billion hours watched per day, will face increasing competition from social media platforms. It observed that the delivery of live video content via social media channels will be one of the growth areas for 2018, as users increase the volume of live broadcast content posted to these platforms. Such examples include Instagram, which has over 800 million monthly active users, and Snapchat which has 178 million daily active users.

Research author Lauren Foye explained: “This content will increasingly be of interest to advertisers, especially in view of Facebook’s monthly active user base of over 2 billion people. The company has launched an app and website ‘Facebook for Creators’ to help users refine video content and generate viewership.”

Juniper found that this will aid growth in content consumption, with data usage from OTT content surpassing 840 Exabytes by 2022, the equivalent of 129 billion hours of 4K streaming.

Pressure from Advertisers

Recent changes to YouTube’s Partner Program means that it will only accept channels with more than 1,000 subscribers, and 4,000 viewing hours acquired across a year, to its shared advertising revenue programme. This change in strategy results from increased advertiser pressure following several high-profile, offensive, video posts by users. Nevertheless, Juniper forecasts YouTube to account for almost a quarter of all FVoD ad spend by 2022.